Puck (Eugene Judd) 4* - Rebalance & New Costume

S0kun

Puck (Eugene Judd) is our latest character to get a rebalance and we hope his new kit can stick the landing with our players! Here's a little insight from our team on his rework and peak into his Alpha Flight costume going live on Thursday July 18th!

Slap Shot (Red) - 6 Red AP
This ability is relatively simple in mechanics and execution, and doesn't really need much help to stay powerful. Did a little bit of rewording to bring that in-line with modern naming conventions, but other than that, the ability gained about a 20% damage boost across the board.

Spin to Win (Green) - 8->6 AP
Spin to Win is the victim of a bit of design hubris. The idea is neat, with Puck cartwheeling to change the locations of tiles on a row, doing some board shake and pushing out some extra damage. And in sims, it worked well. In the real world though, it's just too complex. The rotated tiles are random, and with multiple rotations, there's no way as a player to figure out what the ability is going to do besides rolling the dice. And at 8 AP, that's a fairly expensive roll.

What we've decided to do is rework the ability so that it still does targeted destruction through a cartwheel, but even moreso with a selected set of tiles, dealing damage but not gaining AP. Basically, the active is now functionally like The Hood's Twin Pistols, but with only one target instead of two. THEN, we kept the feeling of cartwheeling with a new Passive, which rotates the 8 tiles surrounding whichever tile he matches. This keeps the chaos that the ability originally caused and causes some interesting and controllable cascades once you're used to the mechanics of it.

Inner Demon (Black) - Black Passive
Inner Demon isn't bad for what it does, but it's one of those that you can't really count on for any kind of real damage since the trigger is somewhat high, and gets higher in concert with Puck's max health. It works for Storm (Classic) because the threshold is low enough, but that ability is designed to punish enemies from hitting Storm who is designed to be a back line character. Puck on the other hand should be in the thick of things, always giving and taking damage. And if we make the threshold low enough to work off that idea, the damage it deals is just going to be anemic.

So, what we've done instead is make this more of a guaranteed set of damage. He'll tote up the damage against him, then let out counter damage when he reaches certain thresholds. This means that facing off against Puck is almost sure to be a damaging experience, so you may want to bring some crowd control or super heavy hitters that can take him down all at once.

entrailbucket

Very nice! He's definitely going to be usable when ascended/boosted!

Pantera236

On the black passive if you have it at 5 covers and he takes a single hit of say 21% of his max health will be do 2 hits of aoe? And if so would it be 2 separate hits or one hit of say 26,932 at 550 and level 5?

Godzillafan67

Thanks for the writeup! Puck looks like a lot of fun now, especially that green. 355 seems like a good defensive build and 553 for the best defense being a good offense. I would probably go with 535 since I don't count on RNG to be a friend of me.

entrailbucket

@Pantera236 said:
On the black passive if you have it at 5 covers and he takes a single hit of say 21% of his max health will be do 2 hits of aoe? And if so would it be 2 separate hits or one hit of say 26,932 at 550 and level 5?

That's a really good question. The rebalance notes talk about bringing heavy hitters to take him down, so I'm going to guess that it's just the one hit in that case.

If the answer is "2 hits," it means that beating any team with a 550 Puck will guarantee you eat 130k AoE, minimum. If they're 10 individual hits, you could take advantage of boosters/strike tiles too.

Let's hope it's not that!

dianetics

This looks like a great rework.
Question on his green. Is the tile damage based on his match damage or on the highest match damage on the team?
The change to the spin is nice, but I don't think he is going to be the leading matcher often.
This could be quite good if you stick him behind a rolling Shang Chi, Col5, Juggs, or other high match damage toons.

Tiger_Wong

This looks good! LFG!!

AlexR

Yay, Puck's uselessly-broken green is getting fixed! I remember how much time we spent in his thread trying to make it work when he released, and it just never did, lol.

Making the cartwheeling passive should definitely help him!

BriMan2222

A character that actually needs a rebalance is getting one, and it looks good? Woooo

Seph1roth5

I kind of think puck's black is weaker now, unless you're playing a lot of heals. It's only going to go off 3x assuming the last doesn't kill him. Whereas the old one could trigger 7x

DAZ0273

Yay for Puck and yay for bringing his original costume into the game, the current thing he wears is an eyesore!

Bzhai

Also thank you for providing stats when he is ascended.

dianetics

@Seph1roth5 said:
I kind of think puck's black is weaker now, unless you're playing a lot of heals. It's only going to go off 3x assuming the last doesn't kill him. Whereas the old one could trigger 7x

If you are running him 355 its's probably going to go off a lot, since at 5 covers the dmg threshold is 10%.

Pylgrim

Isn't it better to never ascend him and play him along 5s? 320% damage for tiles owned by your 5s is going to be way better than 75% of his own ascended tile damage.

Also I wonder if the black passive triggers again if you heal him for over 10%.

entrailbucket

@Pylgrim said:
Isn't it better to never ascend him and play him along 5s? 320% damage for tiles owned by your 5s is going to be way better than 75% of his own ascended tile damage.

Also I wonder if the black passive triggers again if you heal him for over 10%.

Seems like a bad trade, but I guess it depends on the particulars of your roster and play style. At 4*, you lose his red as a worthwhile damage ability, and his passive damage will be very low too.

dianetics

@Pylgrim said:
Isn't it better to never ascend him and play him along 5s? 320% damage for tiles owned by your 5s is going to be way better than 75% of his own ascended tile damage.

Also I wonder if the black passive triggers again if you heal him for over 10%.

His kit now is very interesting giving him a few different ways to use him effectively.

Ascend him and have him in front then he will shake the board up and do a lot of shenanigans. Pair him with a healer and he should do alright, maybe Crystal or Bong?
Don’t ascend him keep him in the back to eat aoe damage and retaliate with board destruction. Use his green to punch the board out and knock out troublesome tiles.

He lends himself to a couple play styles and on paper he is miles better than his initial release.

Marc_Spector

Incredible redesign! -- as mentioned just above, it works-wonders whether wanting to keep him at 4* or Ascending him (I'll be aiming for the latter now!)

and THANK YOU for the classic costume! -- Here's hoping the rest of Alpha Flight and their late-80s aesthetic follow sometime too!